Technology Meets the Remote Islands of the South Pacific
By Todd Gnuse, LiDAR Acquisition Technician
Linking the remote islands of American Samoa with broadband fiber optics was the task for the American Samoan Telecom Authority (ASTCA) and one of the more memorable projects I have ever been part of. In the Spring of 2011, ASTCA hired the Terrametrix mobile LiDAR team (now TREKK) for the purpose of updating the islands’ digital infrastructure to better prepare them for natural disasters like tsunamis. Our part was to place more than 900 targets and document 120.7 miles with terrestrial mobile LiDAR on three of the five Manua islands and the coral atolls of Ofu, Tutuila and Olosega called American Samoa.
The term “roads” is mild exaggeration. Most roads were mere trails around the coastline of the bay area except for the newly constructed McKinley Memorial Highway, a 5-mile stretch along the south shore providing access from Pago Pago to Fagasa. What we saw in infrastructure was a combination of dirt paths and urban paved streets. It was evident that our mission plan and targeting would require a surveyor's approach and a lot of footwork, most on a 14 percent grade.
Although American Samoa is an unincorporated US territory, the citizens are U.S. nationals bilingual in Samoan and English, which was helpful considering communication was key to the coordination of targeting and collecting xyz coordinates. Because their land is communally owned, and it is illegal for anyone less than one-half Samoan to own land, cultural considerations had to be accounted for. Homes comprised of generations living under the same roof, many of whom have spent their entire lives on the island.
All our work needed to have pre-publication of activities to the public prior to the work. Our daily morning meetings provided the LiDAR data acquisition plan with the route provided by the client. The goal was to obtain 1-foot contours and 75-foot width on each side of the centerline without cultural interference. We were assigned local guides knowledgeable of their customs and spirituals beliefs. The people of Samoa are very proud of their culture and the beliefs that have been passed down from their ancestors. For instance, it was disrespectful to move a fallen coconut. It was sacrilegious to paint a target on any part of the many above-ground crypts where Samoans buried their loved ones in their front yards to keep them close. They are also deeply religious, and we were not allowed to work on Sundays in honor of the sabbath.
It was hard not to be immersed in their culture. Everything about the Samoan way of life was about family “aiga” and respect for the elderly. I remember getting into the vehicle to paint targets with my Samoan crew, Asa and Ace, and the first case of business was to determine the pecking order based on age! You did what your elder said without hesitation.
Documenting the islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was a throw back to what life must have been like in the early 1900’s. The irony was that we were using advanced LiDAR technology in areas still recovering from the 2009 tsunami that killed 119 Samoans because of no warning system. And, as luck would have it, we were now in the “Pacific Ring of Fire” during the 2011 Japan tsunami earthquake, still without civil defense tsunami warnings. To say this project embraced personal meaning for me is an understatement. Some of the people worked with had lost loved ones in the 2009 tsunami. We watched the devastation in Japan as the tsunami waved southerly. I was about to step on the one of only two weekly flights routinely scheduled to leave the island, just thinking, “This could be the next tsunami to hit the island, and I’m jumping on a plane headed to Hawaii not knowing if it would be there to land!”
It gave us a a nice feeling inside knowing that we were helping plan fiber routes to link up the villages for any future warnings for tsunamis.
Talofa!